Michael Atalla

Passionate about the success of his products and services, the satisfaction of his customers and has extensive experience as an IT manager, architect, and business & technology leader throughout his 20 years in the technology industry. Michael has been with Microsoft for over 11 years and is director of product management for Microsoft Office. In this role he helps to align customer requirements and market needs with engineering priorities to ensure that Office remains the most powerful suite of productivity tools available for businesses and consumers. Michael is a leading technology evangelist for Office and he and his team represent Microsoft worldwide at events and through the web and other media channels. Previous to his role on the Office team, Michael was director of product management for Exchange Server and Exchange Online where he was instrumental in the return of the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC) and helped to launch Exchange Server 2007, 2010 and Exchange Online. Michael also served as Group Product Manager for the Identity & Access team at Microsoft where he led the successful acquisition of Ottawa-based Alacris, a key component of Forefront Identity Manager, and also played a key role in bringing the first version of Active Directory Rights Management Services to market. Before coming to Microsoft, Michael was a business and technology leader at Bindview Corporation, acquired by Symantec, and at Getronics NV, acquired by KPN. Michael lives near Microsoftâ€™s Redmond, Washington headquarters with his wife Julia and children Nicholas and Charlotte.